


Morning After

by Serie11



Series: Femslash February 2018 [24]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Cute, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hangover, Morning After, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 14:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13813152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Oh, so that was that rumbling noise. Aloy had just thought that it was someone already at their forge. Nope, apparently it was just Petra snoring. Aloy thought it was adorable.





	Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of the previous fic in this collection, Scrappersap Courage. However both fics can be read as oneshots.

 

Aloy blinks awake slowly. A tendril of light had creeped through the curtains covering the window, and the sun had shifted positions so that now that light fell directly on Aloy’s face. She isn’t used to sleeping inside, so it is no wonder that she’d stayed asleep until the light had woken her up.

She yawns and scratches her head. It feels weird from how she’d slept last night – usually she pulled her braids out, and she can tell that she’d need to brush it thoroughly later. More concerning at the moment is the fact that she doesn’t know exactly where she is. She remembers coming to Free Heap, greeting Petra and all the Oseram, getting a piece of her armour fixed and asking about a piece that she needed for one of the main computer rooms up in the ruins of GAIA Prime. And then it had gotten late and someone had suggested that they all bring out the alcohol, and things had gotten a bit blurry after that.

Aloy remembers sitting with a group of people away from the fire, and laughing, and getting something spilled all over her… Hmm. She’s not wearing a shirt, and these definitely aren’t her pants, so she must have gone somewhere to get cleaned up.

Reluctantly, she rolls over, and stares in shock at Petra, who had her mouth parted slowly and was quietly snoring within arm’s reach of Aloy.

Oh, so _that_ was that rumbling noise. Aloy had just thought that it was someone already at their forge. Nope, apparently it was just Petra snoring. Aloy thought it was adorable. Petra’s face is slack and smooth in sleep, and Aloy can’t help but stare at her for a minute.

Now for the puzzling question of how she got here. And the fact that she’s shirtless. Hm. She _hopes_ that she would remember if they had sex last night, but it looks like she’s just going to have to awkwardly question Petra about it. She sighs to herself. Great. As if her raging crush on Petra wasn’t bad enough, now she has to look her in the eyes and ask if they slept together.

Slowly, Aloy edges her way out of the bed, glad her stealth skills come in handy for situations like this. She doesn’t _snoop_ around Petra’s room – she’s just looking for her clothes, that’s all. And if she happens to spot anything else interesting around the room, then that’s just coincidence.

There’s a lot of metal. Like, a _lot._ Aloy finds scraps and half-finished projects and abandoned projects with dust covering them. There’s some paper with drawings and notes and scribbles that Aloy instinctively scans, putting them into the focus’s memory for her to have a closer look at later. It’s fascinating, to see some of the versions of Petra’s famous canons, to see how they could have been made if Petra had changed her mind or had a different idea. Aloy is always thinking about her bow modifications, how she can maximise output as much as she can across all her weapons, but she’d always seen the canons as stagnant and unchanging. The papers give her a different view, one that she hadn’t considered before.

She finds her Ice Hunter armour in a sink and gingerly prods at it a little. When she sniffs it, it smells overwhelmingly of mead. That brings back a few memories – getting splashed, coming back to Petra’s room, pouring those freezing cold buckets of water over her head.

Aloy’s cheeks heat as she realised that she’d just _stripped_ in front of Petra in order to wash herself. That was embarrassing. Well, she would just have to deal with it in the same conversation that she was going to be having with Petra later, anyway. _Hey yeah, so what happened last night? Did we have sex or what? And I’m sorry for getting naked randomly in your room._

Aloy resists the urge to slap her own face. This armour is going to need cleaning, because there’s no way she’s going to go running around stinking of alcohol. It shouldn’t take too long, but it did mean that she would need some more clothes for today, since she still doesn’t have a shirt on. Now, where would Petra keep her spare clothes in a room that looks like it’s entirely devoted to metalworking…

She pokes around in a few of Petra’s draws. There’s one that’s just filled with small bits of metal that are twisted on one end and flat with different patterns on the other, and another one that has half a dozen long metal tools in it. Aloy picks one up. The end is shaped strangely in a cross pattern. It reminds her of the bits of metal. She opens that draw again and finds one that’s about the same size as the diameter of the tool. The flat end fits neatly into the tool. They must go together.

She puts the bits of metal back and continues looking for a shirt. Then she stops in the middle of the room, berating herself. Her _armour_ had been soaked, but that was her armour! It was made the resists chillwater! Where were her underclothes? They should have been fine after last night.

Aloy finds everything in the corner with the water buckets and quickly puts them on. Feeling a lot more secure, she’s eyeing the door and thinking about her escape when she hears Petra roll over in the bed. Aloy freezes in place and peers over to her. Petra has pulled the sheets up over her head and curled into a ball.

“Are you awake?” Aloy asks quietly, not wanting to wake her up if she isn’t.

Petra mumbles. “Grudgingly. I swear I used to be able to drink a lot more than I did last night, and be perfectly fine the next day.” Her voice is muffled from under the sheets, but Aloy can still make out her words.

Aloy smiles a bit. “If you say so.”

Petra flips down the covers so she can stare at Aloy. “I do say so, spark.” She looks Aloy over. “I see you found your clothes.”

“Yeah,” Aloy says, shifting her weight between her feet. “My armour is still pretty much soaked though.”

“Hmn,” Petra mumbles. “You can clean it, if you want. I’m just going to lay here and pretend that I’m not dying.”

Aloy grins as she makes her way back to the sink and uses some of the spare water that she hadn’t used last night, along with some of her own herbs, to get the worst of it out of the armour. Petra doesn’t say anything through her banging around, but Aloy doubts that she had gone back to sleep. She’s probably thinking about last night, and Aloy, and what it all means, just like Aloy is.

She opens the window and hangs the armour in the sun, hoping it’ll dry faster that way. Petra is watching her from the bed.

“That should be fine,” Aloy says, smiling at her. It’s maybe a little awkward already, so she just spits out the real awkwardness, because it’s better to get it all over in one go. “So… what happened last night?”

“Riles poured a whole jug of mead over us both, I brought you up here to clean off, you kissed me but then we got interrupted by some idiot at the door and by the time I came back you were asleep,” Petra says straightforwardly.

“Oh,” Aloy says. She kissed Petra. Drunk her has more courage than sober her, it appears. “Um. Sorry?”

Petra shakes her head. “Don’t be. I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time.”

Aloy’s brain scrambles like one of her corrupted data points. “Err,” she says. Petra raises an eyebrow. “Me too.”

“I could tell,” Petra said, the corner of her mouth quirking.

“Well... what are we going to do about it?” Aloy asks, putting her hands on her hips. She doesn’t know what Petra wants, really, but she knows that she couldn’t deal with being tied to one place.

“I know you’re one to wander,” Petra says. “And I know that you’re doing something up in the mountains.” She hesitates. “I just want you to know that… I get it. And I wouldn’t mind you coming and going, if you wouldn’t mind me staying here.”

Aloy’s heart melts. “How could I mind you staying here? I know that you’ve got people depending on you. And I know that you love your work and your forge and that you’d be unhappy if you couldn’t do it.” She scuffs her toe on the ground.

Petra sits up in bed. “These lunkheads would fall apart without me,” she says wryly.

“You’re the one with the most common sense in this place,” Aloy says, grinning at her.

Petra snorts. “Know I know you’re seeing with romance goggles.” She hops out of bed and comes to stand next to Aloy, looking at her searchingly. “What I’m trying to say, spark, is that… well, I’d like to call you my own. For as long as you’d have me, in whatever form it takes. I’d miss you when you were gone, but… I’m a big girl. I can deal with it.”

Aloy can’t speak for a few seconds because her throat is choked up. “I’d really like that too, Petra. You’re so clever and kind and you always make me feel at home here… I really appreciate it. You never ask me for anything but my company. It makes me feel like you value me as a person.”

“That’s because I do value you,” Petra says, reaching over to hug her. Aloy buries her head in Petra’s neck and tries not to sniffle. This morning has just felt like one big dream to Aloy, but she hopes that it’s all true – that she can have Petra, like this, all to herself.

“Thank you,” she mumbles. Petra squeezes her reassuringly.

“No problem, spark. Let me just say, you’d better get used to being loved and valued, because oh boy, you’ve got a lot of that in your future when I’m around.”

Aloy manages a laugh. Petra pulls back a little, and she takes the opportunity to wipe her eyes. She smiles at Petra and cocks her head. “Come on, you have to smile. After all, it’s an exciting day!”

Petra chuckles. “It’s true. It _is_ a very exciting day. A day when I finally get to hold you in my arms.”

As if to demonstrate her words, Petra puts her arms around Aloy’s waist and lifts her up, spinning her around in a circle. Aloy laughs and threw her arms around Petra’s neck, hanging on tight.

Petra puts her down, but Aloy’s head is still spinning. Petra had done that easily – she must be stronger than Aloy had thought. They’re both still smiling, and Aloy ducks her head, suddenly a bit shy.

“Hey,” Petra says softly. She puts a finger under Aloy’s chin and tilts it up.

“Do you have to do anything?” Aloy asks breathlessly.

Petra shakes her head. “You woke up pretty early.”

Aloy raises her eyebrows, shocked. “It’s a few hours past dawn!”

Petra laughs. “We Oseram like to do things at night. Besides, after the partying that happened last night, no one’s going to be out of bed at this time unless they absolutely have to, and no one’s called an alarm yet, so they’re probably all still passed out in the courtyard. So no, I have nowhere else I have to be.”

Aloy licks her lips and Petra follows the movement. Slowly, Aloy leans forward until their lips are brushing. Petra smiles into the kiss, and Aloy leans into her, savouring the moment.

“Like I said, there’s nowhere else I have to be,” Petra says, eyebrow quirking. “So let’s make good use of this time, shall we?”

Aloy laughs as Petra sweeps her towards the bed. “Yes, we should.”

**Author's Note:**

> This prompt was: friends to lovers


End file.
